I've been working with Ace TS over the last month or so dealing with a very stubborn drive. However, we've reached the end of the line after the case was referred on the 'developers'. I wondered if any others have had a similar experience with this fault?

WDC WD40NMZW-11GX6S1. PCB swapped with appropriate SATA, and full accesses to the SA is gained after disabling SED.

Fault: Whilst it has been possible to read the SA normally, and at full speed, the read speed of any LBA is extremely slow. The symptoms of the read speed are typical to that found in other WD drives when there is the "slow responding fault". All of the heads inside the HDD test OK and read equally well. This does not appear to be a heads issue - the heads have good read/write functionality. If I set the timeout for the reading at 10000ms all sectors can be read, at a rate of 64KB/s. Similar performance is found when the HDD is connected to DDI.

Attempts to resolve the slow responding fault in the normal manner report success, but slow-read issue persists. Additional attempts which Ace have outlined to try and resolve a 'slow responding fault' have also failed. All firmware modules report as OK. Use of appropriate donor modules do not help when written to the drive. Ace TS have mentioned that they have another customer with a matching drive with a matching fault, so it looks as if this issue will be common in the future. They said that there will not be full support for SpyGlass in the next update of PC3000, and it will be the update after that where any solution shall be applied.

I do have a history of all of the steps which have been taken by myself and Ace TS. Needless to say it is quite long.

I just wondered if anyone has had a similar experience on this series of HDD?

I've not yet seen that specific issue, so I'm not certain. I wonder if the issue has to do with the media cache (we all know how much fun those have been with Seagate). Perhaps if the media cache has bad sectors it's hanging each time it tries to access the cache, then finally gives up and reads the sectors requested.

Just as an experiment, have you tried editing headmap in RAM and imaging just one head at a time with the other heads totally disabled? Perhaps if it's just one head that's the problem the others will be able to read faster individually.

I’ve had a few where the “slow responding fix” reports success but mod 32 was unchanged in copy 0

Could it be that the drive is undoing the changes by updating the module from its copy in RAM (although wouldn't this affect both copy 0 and copy 1?)?

I don’t think so. I tested the writing ability by loading the mod into pc3k, altering two bytes (a blank “00” byte to “FF” , writing back the mod and re-reading. The altered bytes were read back unchanged. Same test on head 1, changes stuck.

I've been working with Ace TS over the last month or so dealing with a very stubborn drive. However, we've reached the end of the line after the case was referred on the 'developers'. I wondered if any others have had a similar experience with this fault?

WDC WD40NMZW-11GX6S1. PCB swapped with appropriate SATA, and full accesses to the SA is gained after disabling SED.

Fault: Whilst it has been possible to read the SA normally, and at full speed, the read speed of any LBA is extremely slow. The symptoms of the read speed are typical to that found in other WD drives when there is the "slow responding fault". All of the heads inside the HDD test OK and read equally well. This does not appear to be a heads issue - the heads have good read/write functionality. If I set the timeout for the reading at 10000ms all sectors can be read, at a rate of 64KB/s. Similar performance is found when the HDD is connected to DDI.

Attempts to resolve the slow responding fault in the normal manner report success, but slow-read issue persists. Additional attempts which Ace have outlined to try and resolve a 'slow responding fault' have also failed. All firmware modules report as OK. Use of appropriate donor modules do not help when written to the drive. Ace TS have mentioned that they have another customer with a matching drive with a matching fault, so it looks as if this issue will be common in the future. They said that there will not be full support for SpyGlass in the next update of PC3000, and it will be the update after that where any solution shall be applied.

I do have a history of all of the steps which have been taken by myself and Ace TS. Needless to say it is quite long.

I just wondered if anyone has had a similar experience on this series of HDD?

Best regards,John

John , I Have ZERO Experience With This Drive But i Use a System Were i Am Able To Bypass Slow Issues in More Then 90% WDC Drives .But I Can Do This With SA Sparing Using Older Method Not Module 02 and 30 .If you are ok with it i can try that same thing remotely and if you can show me what all is done i might get some new trick up my head ,Let me know if you wanna try it as these days i train a canadian company data recovery at night

Changes to mod 32 are definitely saved when using the 'automatic' slow responding fault. Attempts have also been made to manually alter mod 32 and also use a donor mod 32. The changes are saved, but no difference is made to the performance of the drive. Attempts have also been made to solve the 'Slow Responding' in RAM as per :

I'll have a try with @lifeguarddubai suggestions of changing the soft/hard reset options. Information below about head-map issues.

It is worth noting that the service area reads at full speed. Normally when a HDD has a the 'slow responding' issue the ROM and SA read very slowly too. In this case only the LBA areas do. This potentially suggests that the fault does not relate to the 'slow responding' issue, but merely has symptoms that are very similar to it. Perhaps there is some sort of donor PCB compatibility issue or other fault. That being said the original USB based PCB was providing the same symptoms when used.

With respect to original drive failure - the user reported that the disk was slowing down/hanging. He kept trying to read from the disk, until the point where it was no longer detected by the computer. I admit this seems like as classic case of bad sectors leading to 'slow responding'.

Below I have copied some of my correspondence with Ace TS on actions performed which they requested so you all have an idea of what tests have been performed.

Finally, I've left the drive reading for a day - 5GB of data was recovered (no read errors) at the 64Kb/s. As you can probably guess the owner of the HDD has a large amount of data on the disk otherwise I would simply 'wait it out'. Time to completion for imaging would be 200+ days.

Best regards,John

------Ace TS correspondence:

Trying what you suggested:

Mod 02 from head 0 was read. The specified area was filled with "00" to the end of the module. I have attached a screenshot so you can check that I have chosen the correct start point.

The "CS recalc" function was run.The new altered module was written back to head 0 and 1.HDD was powered off.

When HDD was powered on, there were two loud clicks and HDD went to ERR. With soft / hard reset it is possible to get to RDY. When entering Utility in kernel model a Debug Stop code is shown. See attached screen shot.

Finally, when SED mode is turned off in "HDD ID"and I try to create a head-map in DE I get the following error: Error execute=LBA->CHS conversion error (0) Device Error Detected: "VSC ERR UNSUP ACTION CODE"

----

And then for some further attempts:

Donor 02 mod from an exact match donor HDD was written to both head 0 and 1 using ABA.

• HDD was powered off, then on. Module 02 access is on in the ROM, but SED it turned off.• On power on the HDD identifies with the donor 02 mod's serial number.

There are no changes to the HDD performance:• It was possible to read all firmware modules at normal speed. The module read speed is normally effected when there is the 'slow responding fault'.• When reading (encrypted) data in DE, the read speed is still 64kb/s• Using the 'solve slow responding' function with donor mod 02 does not improve the performance.• I have written the patient mod 02 back to the drive (copies 0 and 1)• I have checked the SATA cable and replaced. Disk imaging performance is the same (64kb/s) when tested on DeepSpar Disk Imager too.

It is not possible to create a Headmap in DE, or use the "RAM head map editing" function. This model of HDD is 'SpyGlass', but in utility the closest match in Utility is to use 'Pebble Beach'. I presume this is why it is not possible to create a head map, or edit head functions? From the tests I have made on different LBA values, all the heads appear to be work, and are reading at 64kb/s.

It is not possible to create a head-map on this model of HDD in Data Extractor (SED is turned off). When I try to create a head-map with the fully working SATA donor SpyGlass HDD it also fails. It looks as if this model is not yet fully supported in PC3K.

Both myself and Ace TS have checked a lot of LBA values at regular LBA intervals to try and test the 10 heads. Perhaps one is weak and is causing the problem. However, all LBA areas tried so far have been read OK. Given they have another customer with a drive with an identical fault it could be a new issue which a solution will have be developed for. Or, it could be a weak head in both HDDs

Good evening. Apparently the second client was me. I have the same problem. We with the Philipp from ACE LAB 5 hours tried to solve the problem of slow responding. 1.I can not adapt the sata pcb 800022 for this disk.when transferring the ROM from the patient, PCB simply stopped working and began to flash the register BSY.2.It was decided to try to work through USB. We were able to save all the modules through the Com Port. all 100%3.when cleaning the 32 modules, we damaged the module 02.they killed a lot of time but nothing helped.

but a miracle happenedI decided to solder the Sata connector to the board. But the disk behaved in exactly the same way.I was upset.I soldered back the USB bridge and returned everything as it was.and decided to check whether after all my manipulations the PCB is working? about a miracle! the disk was determined on a regular basis and gave access to the data at a speed of 80 mb.what happened? You can only guessthe data is recoered 100%.

Just an update on this, and reply to einstein9 - It looks like some SpyGlass drives can not have a head-map created for them yet. I spent some time asking AceTS with this. They have admitted that for some models of SpyGlass a head-map gets created normally, but for others is fails. Ace TS stated:

"Some SpyGlass drives have the FW structure which is different from another ones. We were able to build the head map in DE and read the data by selected heads for some SpyGlasses, but another ones are too different and it's not possible to build the head map in DE, and it's totally impossible to change the map in RAM for all such drives."

Needless to say it is with the 'developers'. No date was given regarding when full support for SpyGlass and Palmer would be in PC3000.

Just an update on this, and reply to einstein9 - It looks like some SpyGlass drives can not have a head-map created for them yet. I spent some time asking AceTS with this. They have admitted that for some models of SpyGlass a head-map gets created normally, but for others is fails. Ace TS stated:

"Some SpyGlass drives have the FW structure which is different from another ones. We were able to build the head map in DE and read the data by selected heads for some SpyGlasses, but another ones are too different and it's not possible to build the head map in DE, and it's totally impossible to change the map in RAM for all such drives."

Needless to say it is with the 'developers'. No date was given regarding when full support for SpyGlass and Palmer would be in PC3000.

John

Well, I think that you already know that the shortest path between 2 points is the Straight Line right? but this doesn't mean that its the only way. there is always alternatives.

_________________Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTCThe only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Hi, i would have liked to remote in next time you have a issue ,But fw should not be touched not even mod 32 and i can do this i am damn sure ,Not only this but sed locked drive also without touching the fw at all

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